As I almost never comment upon current events, these blog entries have a timeless triviality. Sample the various years and see what interests you.

Saturday, December 19, 2015

The Interior Painting Project Part 5

Ceiling texture and paint

Today was the day to fix bare spots in the texture of the living room ceiling. I searched the internet for ways to repair texture and settled on the Homax ceiling texture spray can.

The can's directions advised making a practice try on a scrap board or a piece of cardboard. I took the can and a cardboard box to the garage. I set the box up on an overhead rack. so that the bottom of the box simulated my living room ceiling.

I cautiously pushed the button. A watery spray spat out of the can. The result was a gloppy mess dripping from the box onto the garage floor.

My younger son stood in the doorway silently watching me. He said, "Try again, but this time keep the can farther away from the box, don't let up on the trigger, and keep the spray moving." (In his typical polite way, he was telling me to step up and spray like a man.)

I applied his advice on my next attempt. A smooth pattern of texture dots appeared on the bottom of the box. Success! I went to the living room and made short work of fixing all the bare spots on the ceiling.

Leaving the texture repairs to dry, we ran off to do errands all afternoon. Then, after a home-made Sichuan meal of spicy tofu and broccoli over Japanese-seasoned rice, my son and I returned to the living room to tackle painting the first coat on the ceiling.

My son volunteered for the skill work of applying the paint with a roller. As the roller cannot apply paint any closer to the wall than the roller radius, this radius distance must be "cut in" using a brush. My job was to cut in this border so that my son would have a wet edge to work with when he came along with the roller.

We made good progress but ran out of paint about two thirds of the way through the first coat.